Category - tax justice

In his book The Great Tax Robbery, Richard Brooks notes that "the institutions that shape the tax system have been captured by the tax industry and corporate interests. Policy is determined through committees and consultation processes in which the tax avoidance industry’s representatives dominate, before being nodded through by parliament without proper debate. This cosy cartel urgently needs dismantling," he declares. Wendy Bradley argues that replacing recently resigned David Heaton with someone on the General Anti Abuse advisory panel (GAAR) who represents ordinary people rather than the tax wizards would be a good place to start.

The Patent Box is supposed to be a tax technicality: from April of this year (2013), any company that makes profits out of a patent can pay a lower tax rate on that bit of their profits. It is meant to encourage investment and economic growth, and to prevent the movement of intellectual property offshore. But Wendy Bradley discovers that the devil is in the detail of what is actually a multi-milion pound giveaway to big companies. The government needs seriously to look at benefits, procedure and priorities in adjusting the tax system.